Re: Why do Pokorny's roots for water have an "a" in front?

Hallo Indo-Europeanists!

On Friday 16 November 2012 19:54:27 r_brunner wrote:

> [Disagreements between Pokorny and later works]
>
> I try to learn the basics of PIE and work now with the PIE root word(s) for
> "water" as an example.
>
> Outside of Pokorny's I could not find another reference that starts PIE
> roots for water with an "a" in front like this.
>
> What does that mean? Is the Pokorny entry outdated? Or is this simply a
> question of transliteration? Or does Pokorny just give more exact
> information than other works?

Yes, Pokorny's dictionary is outdated. Look, it is 50 years old,
and since then, laryngeal theory, which Pokorny did not use, has
been generally accepted and the phonology of PIE deeply revised,
and many reconstructions changed (including most of those featuring
the vowel */a/). Also, some of Pokorny's reconstructions have been
shown to be wrong in the meantime.

The problem is that there is so far no more recent PIE etymological
dictionary to replace Pokorny's dictionary, and thus it still is
often referred to.

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